


Bitter Soulmates

by IdrisEleven



Series: Da Vinci's Ficlets [5]
Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Comment Fic, Implied Relationships, M/M, Soulmates, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-03
Updated: 2016-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-12 17:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7942441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdrisEleven/pseuds/IdrisEleven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoroaster awakes with a soulmate mark that he believes is a practical joke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Soulmates

**Author's Note:**

> A bit of fluff based on a series of "bitter soulmates" prompts from Tumblr.

“Oh--this. this is a joke. Very funny. You can call April Fools now.”

Zo looked down at his wrist for another moment, rubbed at it with a finger. When that failed to even smudge the letters, he lifted his arm and ran his tongue, broad and flat, across the name, and scrubbed again with his right hand. The letters still remained.

“Okay, fuck you, Leo. A joke is a joke, but how the fuck did you manage to give me a tattoo without my noticing it. And don’t you think that is taking things a bit too far.” He grabbed the tail of his reasonably clean shirt and used it to scrub harder. Just in case it wasn’t actually a tattoo.

Leo was still at his table, where he had been when Zoroaster fell asleep last night. Well, technically early this morning, since the bells of the Palazzo Signoria had tolled four before he gave up and fell across the pallet in the corner. Sure, Leo’s actual bed would have been more comfortable--more a lot of things--but he preferred to be invited.

Apparently it wouldn’t have mattered, since it looked like Leo hadn’t moved at all. In fact, at his voice, the artista had startled, clearly surprised that there was anybody else in the studio.

He looked like hell, and Zo felt it was his duty and pleasure to inform him of that fact. “Leo, you look like hell. Have you slept at all in the last three days?”

Impatiently, Leo peered through reddened and puffy eyelids. “Zo? Why are you--?” Hands ran through messy hair. “I don't have time to sleep, I’ll sleep once I get this figured out.”

A hand went to the back of his neck, and Leo turned his chin from side to side, working out kinks. With a sigh, he stood up, stretching his back and groaning. Definitely a sign that he hadn’t moved from that stool for hours. Zo turned his eyes back to the indelible lettering on his arm, mostly so he didn’t have to watch Leo standing at the chamber pot in the corner.

Several noisy moments later, Leo refastened his trousers and wandered over to where Zo was sitting. His eyes were still mostly unfocused, clear evidence that his brain was still deeply engaged with whatever he had been working on--a way to move a river into a new channel, the exact expression the Madonna would have at the Annunciation, how fish scales could be repurposed for armor. But even with his mind distracted, Leo was aware of some physical needs, and both Zo and food were over in the same corner of the studio. It was not clear which was currently impelling his trajectory.

So Zo did not hurry to draw up his own trousers. Instead, he shifted his naked ass over so Leo could sit if he chose to, still scrubbing at his wrist.

Leo grabbed a pear from the bowl on the table, and meandered to the pallet, where he dropped heavily and nuzzled his nose into the crease of Zo’s neck.

Zo pulled away slightly. “At least stop chewing, Leo. You leave enough of a mess without adding partially masticated fruit!”

Slowly, Leo’s eyes returned to focus, and he noticed Zo’s attention to his own wrist. “What’s that?”

Honestly, the man was not safe even in his own home. “That joke you decided to pull on me, Leo? I don’t believe you have forgotten it already.”

Leo stared, his green eyes boring directly into Zo’s warm brown ones. That was why Zo stayed, wasn’t it? When Leo finally--finally--looked directly at you, like you were the most amazing thing in the entire universe. Well, that was intoxicating, and happened just often enough that Zo stayed through everything else. All the experiments and the muck and the time he’d had to sleep in bat shit during Leo’s trial. . .he did it all for these moments of being treasured. For the moments when everything else just stopped.

Sometimes, Zo felt he stopped breathing. Nothing moved in those moments.

Until Leo began chewing again, a noisy, wet mastication that was undoubtedly deliberately obnoxious. Leo looked down at Zo’s hands, and said through the sound of pulped fruit, “What joke?”

With a sigh of disgust, Zo held up his wrist, turned so Leo could see the spiky black letters that ran precisely across his inner wrist: Girolamo Riario.

Leo looked up. “I didn’t put that there.”


End file.
